There’s almost nothing I love to read more than a good cozy mystery, and I really enjoyed every minute I spent immersed in “Sick of Shadows.” With only a small bit of language and nothing graphic, this was a cozy mystery at its best.
Elizabeth MacPherson knows her family is eccentric, but just how eccentric, she knows not. When she goes to Georgia for the wedding of her cousin Eileen, she wasn’t prepared to discover that her cousin Alban had built a replica of a Disney castle right across the street from the family home. Eileen was recently released from a mental hospital, her aunt is an alcoholic, and her grandfather, formerly of the navy, likes to be addressed as “Captain Grandfather.” With colorful characters lurking around every corner, Elizabeth feels like the only sane person on the premises, and she sends several urgent letters to her brother, Bill, begging him to come down and rescue her from the house of lunatics, but he can’t get away.
Eileen is feeling much better now, but she’s having pre-wedding jitters. She’s been working on a painting as a gift for her fiancé, but she’s worried that it won’t be done on time. She won’t let anyone see it, and they can only surmise that it’s a landscape of the lake, as she’s spent all her time there lately. But when Eileen ends up dead, adrift in a boat in the middle of the water, and her painting is no where to be found, Elizabeth guesses that she included something in the painting that someone didn’t want to be discovered.
It’s unnerving to think that you’re staying in the same house with a possible murderer, but even more difficult to take is the idea that any number of the people in the house could have done it. Elizabeth wants to figure out who did it, but she’s concerned at the possible outcome. No matter who done it, it’s bound to ruin that branch of the family forever.
I found myself guessing to the end, and I enjoyed the characters’ personalities as well as the author’s voice. I will definitely be looking for more by award-winning author Sharyn McCrumb.
(This book was published in 1984 by Random House.)
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